Cancer Popularity Contest
I was diagnosed with two cancers three months apart to different reactions
Dear Readers,
My sister Wendy first watched my church’s livestream on Rose Sunday in Lent March 2020. St. David’s observes two Sundays when the liturgical color is rose: the third Sunday in Advent and the fourth Sunday in Lent. My rose chasuble at St. David’s could reasonably be called pink. Wendy said to me after the service, “You looked like a walking, talking breast cancer ribbon.” I know some might find it startling that my sister would say that to someone who had just had breast cancer surgery and was starting to undergo radiation therapy, but those people don’t understand our sisterly senses of humor. I found her comment hilarious.
Breast cancer changed my life and immediately opened up a new community. Several parishioners who had been through breast cancer ministered to me. I expressed concern to one of them about this new dual relationship, and she responded, “You are not my priest right now. We are speaking woman to woman.” Non-parishioner friends who had experienced breast cancer reached out. One said to me over lunch, “If everyone in this restaurant right now who has had breast cancer stood up, you’d be shocked by how many of us there are.”
Three months after being diagnosed with breast cancer I was diagnosed with a second primary cancer (i.e., not spread from the breast): lung cancer. I’m not a smoker, and my health-conscious husband has regularly tested our house for radon since we moved in. Lung cancer was not on my radar screen and carries a stigma. I soon learned that having lungs, not smoking, is the biggest risk factor for lung cancer.
Lung cancer has a color, like breast cancer has pink: white. But when I wear my white chasuble, no one is reminded of my disease. While my family and friends were kind to me when I received this second diagnosis, I heard more silence than with breast cancer. Expressions of love, yes (like the cut and stapled lungs from my beloved niece Betty that I pictured with this newsletter on social media), but I didn’t know anyone who had undergone the emergency surgery I faced, even though as an experienced priest I have prayed with people undergoing surgery on knees, hips, heart, shoulders, brain, ovary, uterus, hand, arm, leg, appendix, colon, prostate, intestine, liver, and of course breast. I worried that this silence was because unlike all of the breast cancer survivors, those who experienced lung cancer were dead.
Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer, killing more people annually than breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers combined. Unlike those cancers, lung cancer lacks a routine screening so is typically caught after surgery isn’t an option anymore. My tumor was caught by accident when I was scanned for radiation for breast cancer. Stage 2B meant that surgery was still an option but was found in a lymph node. I had only a 35% chance of living five more years. If it had been 2A my chances would have shot up to over 60%.
My emergency lung surgery had to wait until after twenty blasts of radiation for breast cancer, then led to a second emergency surgery just a few hours later and over a week in the hospital, split between ICU and a stepdown unit during April 2020. As I was being prepped for that first surgery, I had to don a pink band on my left arm showing that I had had lymph nodes removed from that arm during my breast surgery, so that arm could not be used for IVs or to draw blood.
The nurses used two different IV starts on my right hand and wrist to administer medicine, but I also had to have blood drawn daily from a different vein, increasingly challenging as veins were blown. As one tech was slapping my arm seeking a vein she could use, she nodded to the pink band on my other arm. “Breast cancer?” she said. “So sorry.”
I wanted to inform her that was the least of my worries, that I couldn’t feel the pain from that surgery or the radiation because my lung was missing. My surgeon had informed me that lungs don’t have nerve cells, but every breath through fractured ribs and the chest tube was wrenching, yet I had to keep breathing. I named my chest tube “The Spear” because it felt like someone had tried to spear me in the heart, just missed it, but then left the spear inside me, scraping my ribs and chest wall with every inhalation and exhalation.
Instead, I said, “My oncologist said the breast cancer saved my life. If I hadn’t had the scans for radiation, no one would have seen the lung cancer until it was too advanced.” She nodded and continued trying to insert a needle.
Since my lung surgery I have connected with many other lung cancer survivors on social media, including some who are thriving more than five years after being diagnosed with stage four. I’ve also been blessed to pray with or for three people I know “IRL” who have since been diagnosed and faced similar treatments. While I wrote about my breast cancer as it was still happening, writing about my lung cancer has felt traumatic. It’s starting to get easier thanks to new project I’m working on with one of my best friends. I can't tell you much about that project yet but I’m thankful to you for reading what you have today about my experience with these two cancers. I’ll say more if we are able to place this piece. In the meantime, I’m waiting for edits back from Blessed Are the Barren. One woman I wrote about in that book was the Samaritan woman at the well from John 4. We studied that passage in Bible study last Wednesday, which was sheer joy. I’m grateful when I get to use book research in other places.
I’d love to hear what’s going on with you this June! Please leave a comment.
Blessings,
Elizabeth Felicetti
What I’m Writing:
All sermons this month!
What I’m Reading
The Other Mother by Rachel Harper. Was reading Mercy Street when I read about this on social media and picked it up. Could not set it down. Excellent. The audiobook is excellent too, even though it’s not read by the author—two different actors read. Highly recommend.
The Parted Earth by Anjali Enjeti. Fabulous historical fiction. I knew almost nothing about the partition of India/Pakistan and am embarrassed by my ignorance. Highly recommend.
Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh. Not finished yet. Intriguing and timely given the leaked Supreme Court document regarding Roe v. Wade.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. Picked up because of my antiquarian book days. A bit more fantastical than my usual reads.
The Deathwatch Beetle by Kjell Erickson. Another Nordic noir. Latest in a series but I have not read any others. Might have enjoyed it more had I read others featuring the same character.
Upcoming Appearances
Women’s Mind, Body, and Soul Retreat, Manakin Episcopal Church, Saturday, August 27. Open to St. David’s and St. Luke’s Episcopal churches as well.
Business of Writing Seminar, September 10, “Crafting a Creative Nonfiction Book Proposal.” Open to MFA students/alumni of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing.
It does seem like there is a “cancer hierarchy,” with some seeming more deserving of sympathy than others. I’m sure you’ve been asked more than once if you were a smoker. I think this all stems from fear, of wanting to protect ourselves from the likelihood that it might be us next. But I love how you put it -- that having lungs is the biggest risk factor. That puts it in perspective. My mom died of colon cancer and was also heavy, and I still myself get trapped in thinking maybe she got it because she was -- okay-- fat. And I feel ashamed about that. But I’m still working on my attitude when those thoughts come up. Thanks for writing about this.
A beautiful read, as always, Elizabeth. I'm sorry to learn about your diagnoses, yet grateful for this new perspective on the varying social significance of different cancers.